We did it as children, behind the teacher's back, during painfully long algebra classes: someone would doodle a cartoon character on a piece of paper, slide it to a friend a few desks down for her to add her own doodle. Three or four kids got involved and by the end of the hour we had a cool piece of artwork, by far the best thing I ever helped create in math class.
Many years later, now that I officially call myself an artist, I wanted to repeat the experience. As an accomplice I invited my friend Bibi Davidson whose artwork is full of stories with intriguing characters like shaggy bunnies, martians, cats, and especially an ubiquitous red girl always involved in emotional scenarios. I thought her kind of wild would mesh well with my style of crazy.
This is our first piece of collaborative art. We hope to paint a few more after this one:
I painted the first character and handed the canvas to Bibi. It was a few days of suspense before she gave me back the canvas with this:
It looked like my girl got caught by a large rabbit in a dress doing something she shouldn't have like...snatching a bird?
Bibi added a quirky pilot girl on the back of her pink bunny and I painted the nest with eggs that she is holding. Then I painted the sky dark and added an exotic flower in the doll's hair and a black heart on her dress.
Bibi's crowd of very alarmed birds joined the group along with spiky grass.
I think we had our story and my last contribution was simply a moon to watch over the scene. Here is our final piece, we called it Midnight Thief:
And a couple of close-ups:
Okay Bibi, now it's your turn to start a new one!